Quotes from Munira Mirza

I think that in the past there has been a kind of cultural resistance to Latin because it's associated with elitism.

A lot of my work involves criss-crossing London to visit the many hundreds of projects, theaters, galleries, museums and groups that comprise the capital's astonishingly rich cultural life.

For so long, Arab culture has been misconceived by the western mindset as exotic, or more recently, as dangerous, so spaces like Mathaf are vital for asserting a sense of connectedness.

Certainly, 'creativity' has been a vital plank of New Labour strategy. It not only hands out money with the enthusiasm of a Medici, but also invites the talented arts world into the very heart of government.

At the same time women are putting on the headscarf, they are also going to work, to education, increasingly vocal in the media - and this is the confusing thing about Muslim women in the West,. They are becoming Westernized at the same time as they are adopting their religious identity more strongly.

A school that believes in the power of knowledge and learning will have reading at its core.

Most Muslims are well integrated, want to live under British law and prefer to send their children to mixed schools. They do not live in bleak ghettoes cut off from society. Their religion is not a barrier to integration and is very often perfectly reconciled with being - and feeling - British.

Some people think that culture is overhyped and peripheral. A season of opera is less important than the refurbishment of a school, they say. Leaving aside the poverty of imagination and aspiration implicit in such a sentiment, it also ignores hardheaded economic reality: Britain, and London in particular, makes big money from culture.

A contemporary artist like Grayson Perry is brilliant partly because of his expert knowledge of art history, not despite it.

Paradoxically, just at the point when racist attitudes were declining in society and many ethnic groups were integrating successfully, our political leaders became obsessed with racism.

Black artists are encouraged to explore their identity but are then pigeonholed according to their ethnicity. We may have seen the decline of old racism, but we are witnessing a new kind of racialising.

There needs to be more schemes to help young people build careers in fashion, like apprenticeships.

Few, if any, political analysts predicted the Arab Spring. The raw energy of millions of protestors in the streets of Tunis and Cairo came as a surprise to many who believed that Arabs were essentially reconciled to their governments and non-democratic rule.

Just as a city cannot protect its manufacturing base without keeping its factories, we cannot have a strong arts sector without studios, rehearsal space, and performance venues.

London centre has a wealth of creative activity but there are parts of London where there isn't a cinema or where library provision is quite weak.

There's a lot of concern that London is changing and artists are being forced to move to new areas.

In times of stress, it is easy to look to one's weaknesses and fear the worst, but it is worth remembering that London's cultural strengths are not some ephemeral dot-com bubble; they are a real, tangible legacy of decades of investment in talent.

We are the most visited city in the world - and they're not coming for the weather. Culture is one of things that's made London hugely successful.

The politically correct illiberal left far too often side with the extremists.

London can be a platform to look at what living in contemporary Britain is all about.

It's important that we challenge the culture of low expectations. You need to believe every child can do well.

After Brexit, we need to design a modern and fair immigration system which attracts talent and investment from the E.U. and the rest of the world.

I think Londoners welcome a spectacular event.

Britain has lots of celebrities who are well known and admired today, but we don't seem to have any heroes.